Moose stew with wine and chocolate

Another exotic ingredient for southern latitudes people; Moose.

I had the luck that Ms North's uncle is a great moose hunter and gave me almost 1.5kg piece of moose. I am really grateful he gave me that, because I had never eaten moose and because it is so damn expensive, starting 90€/kg (I know, it hurts!)

So I had a bit of dilemma of how to cook it; Ms North is vegetarian for 15 years so she has no idea how to cook it, then I remembered how my grandad use to cook wild boar and how delicious it is (for me the best game meat).

In the part of Pyrenees where my family comes from, it is typical to cook game giving it previously a marinate and then super slowly and with chocolate.

Ingredients

1kg moose
1,5 - 2 L of red wine
2 bay leaves
rosemary
1 large leek
2 carrots
500g small scallions
100g dark chocolate 
salt, pepper and olive oil

Preparation

We are going to marinate the moose for 12h, so it becomes more tender. Cut the moose in big chunks and place them in a big bowl, cover with red wine and 2 bay leaves and a flat tea spoon of rosemary. Let it marinate overnight in the fridge.

Next day, remove the moose from the marinate and place the wine in a pot to boil, you want to boil the wine because it is diluted a bit of blood and other stuff typical from game meats. Let it boil for few minutes and remove all the foam that forms in the top.

Meanwhile in a big pot, add a bit of olive oil and fry the meat for all sides, we don´t want to cook the meat but to seal the interior for the next cooking. When this is done pour the wine you had boiled and place the pot to the oven, covered by aluminium folio at not higher than 120°C (100-110 is recommended) for at least 6h 30 minutes or 7h. 

You can cook some scallions at the same time in the oven.

After that, smash the chocolate, add it to the stew and mix around till it mixes with the stew's sauce. You can remove a bit of the "juice" if you think there is too much.
The chocolate I added is called "chocolate a la piedra"; it is a type of chocolate which feels granulated and has a bit of flour, so it helps to thicken the sauce.

For this kind of stew, is better to let to rest it for 12-24h.

Hope you like it!
Mr South

Baked cheesecake by Gordon Ramsay

Super easy and delicious cheesecake!!

Serves for 6-8

Ingredients

550g cream cheese (I used 600g, because philadephia cheese are from 300g)
160g sugar
3 eggs
2 tbps flour (0,5 dl flour)
1 lemon
strawberries

Preparation

Can't be easier!! In a bowl, mix the cream cheese and sugar. Then add slowly the eggs (slightly beaten).

Once you get an homogeneous batter add the flour and keep mixing, then add the zest of 1 lemon.

Preheat the oven at 180ºC. Grease the cake tray and place to oven for 35min. I read that you have to place a mug with water in the oven as the cake not to break, I did it and worked.

Let it cool down, and garnish with strawberries.

Here Gordon Ramsay's recipe, I didn't put raspberries. 

Hope you like it!

Mr South

Barley risotto with yellowfoot mushrooms and fresh garlic

A bit of experiment here; I wanted to make a risotto but using barley, because I still had lots from the barley casserole. I used too the mushrooms I picked and dried in autumn; yellowfoot.

Turn out really good recipe so I decided to share it with you!

Serves for 2

Ingredients

• 1,5 dl broken barley
• 10 fresh garlic
• 4 shallots
• Dried mushrooms, bit more of half a mug
• knob of butter
• Parmesan cheese
• 1,5L vegetable broth
• salt and pepper

Preparation

Start rehydrate the mushrooms with hot water and let it rest for 10 min. Meanwhile in a big sauce pan, add the butter and the finely chopped shallots and saute. When they change colour add the mushrooms and the fresh garlic chopped saute for 2-3 min.

Meanwhile your broth has to be ready and boiling.

Add the barley, mix all together and add the broth, slowly till everything gets soaked, from now on is a labour intensive process, you have to keep stirring with a wooden spoon and when the broth gets sucked, add a bit more. this process takes 20-25minutes.

When you have the barley at your desire taste, grate the Parmesan, give it a last stir and it is ready to be served!

Enjoy it!
Mr South

Beans with aspargus

Ingredients

• 300 gr big white beans
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 big onion
• 2 carrots
• 1 leek
• couple garlic nails
• white aspargus 
• parsley
• 1dl white whine
• 4 eggs
• saffron

Preparation

Leave overnight the beans in water, at least 12h. Next day discard the water and in a pot place the beans, onion, carrot, leek, garlic and bay leave, cover everything with water and set the fire to medium heat.

When the water starts to boil, drop half a glass of cold water to stop the boiling, this prevents the beans to break. Repeat this for 3-4 times and then let it boil slowly for 1,5-2h or as long as the package recommends.

When the beans are cooked place the vegetables, discarting the carrot and bay leaves, and blend it together with few broken beans, this will help thicken the sauce. Pour it back to the pot with the rest of the beans and mix gently, always with a wooden spoon.

Chop the parsley finely and pour it to the pot, as well add the white aspargus (you can chop them or put them whole), a bit of saffron and the white wine, let it boil for few minutes to evaporate the alcohol.

Serve with half boiled egg

If you have available, add few clams few minutes before serving.
Hope you like it!
Mr South

Crepe Suzette by Gordon Ramsay

Recipe from Gordon Ramsay

Serves for 4 people.

Ingredients

• 2dl flour
• 3dl milk
• 2 eggs
• 2 oranges
• 50g sugar
• 4cl cointreau
• 25g hazelnuts 
• butter
• salt

Preparation

In a bowl add the flour, a pinch of salt and the battered eggs, mix all together and add the milk. Melt a knob of butter and add it with the zest of an orange. Let it rest for 30min.

Make the crepes in a pan with a bit of butter.

Peel the two oranges and cut nice parts, squeeze the rest. In a pan add the sugar, caramelise, once ready add the cointreau and flambé it. After fire is gone, add the juice and the chopped hazelnuts and the orange pieces.

Plate the crepes folded in quarters and pour the caramel sauce on top.

Serve with vanilla-blueberry ice cream.

Mr South

Fritas de bacalao with all i oli

Hei!

sorry we haven´t updated the blog so much lately, we have been a bit busy and cooking a lot!! we have many recipes that will come soon; moose, beans, rabbit, cod ...

Today we are going to post a recipe I learned from Rick Stein in his documentary about Spain. To be honest I didn´t try this dish before, but it was a good idea, he call it fritas de bacalao (chips of cod). And it was an easy way to make something similar to buñuelos.

Just a quick intro, salted cod is hugely common all around Spain, but mostly it comes from Iceland and Norway!

Ingredients

• 3 tbsp flour
• 2 medium potatoes
• 3dl water
• 2 eggs
• 250g salted cod
• parsley
• garlic
• salt 
• pepper

Preparation

If you have bought the salted cod you have to rehydrate the cod for 24h. For that you will clean the cod with abundant water to rinse away all the salt. You will keep the cod in water in the fridge for at least 24h, changing it every 8-12h, this varies depending on the thickness of the cod and the temperature of the fridge. You have to taste if the salt level is correct, keeping in mind that when you cook it will increase naturally.

In a pot, place the cod filet with cold water and place to low-medium heat. when the water start to be warm, around 75°C remove the cod, it should break easily.

In the water of the cod boiled, cook 2 medium potatoes, you can slice them so to cook faster.

Now, you have to taste the cod, if it tastes too strong discard the water, if not keep it for the next step.
In a sauce pan add 3 dl of water or water from cooking the cod and the flour, stir till an homogeneous mix is achieved. Add a bit of olive oil, couple of chopped garlic nails, 2 eggs and the potatoes mashed and the cod which you have broken with your fingers.
Stir all together in medium fire till it thickens. Chop some parsley and give it a last stir and let the mixture cool down.

When it is cool you can make little balls and deep fry them in olive oil, or if you don´t have a frier, in a pan with a bit of olive oil will do.

Here there is the original recipe from Rick Stein:

Things I do different:

• I slight cook the cod and I give it a slow cook
• I don´t add so much eggs, but more potato
• I don´t boil the cod with the skin, I removed it and eat it fried with a bit of flour, amazing

For serving a bit of all i oli is perfect!

Hope you like it!

Mr South

Coca de recapte

Hi!

Today I would like to share another typical Catalan dish, coca de recapte; it is a sort of catalan version of pizza, meaning coca (cake), de recapte ( for provision or to gather supplies).

The coca de recapte is nothing else but a bread olive oil dought with whatever you can find to put in top, most typically with escalivada and salted hearring or sausage. As the same words says, this was an easy food, that could be eaten during next days (it is as good cold than recently baked hot) and you didn´t need to refrigerate it. As well it is said that in the old days, in the small villages of rural Catalonia, the coca de recapte it was done by gathering some spare ingredients from few houses/families and going to the village bakery to cook it. So there is where the name comes.

Either the name comes from, this is a super easy meal, ideal for having many guests at home, or for a day out or picnic. As well, you can make a big batch of dough and freeze it and will stay perfect for few months.

Ingredients

• 10dl bread flour (we use flour with 11% protein)
• 3dl water
• 10g fresh yest
• 2tsp salt
• 0,75dl virgin olive oil

Preparation

Mix everything but the olive oil in a big bowl, use better slight warm water, work it with hands till it is a big dough, and then in a clean surface work it till you achieve an homogeneous dough. Keep in mind that this recipe it has low water content, so in the beginning might seem it is too dry, nevertheless, because not all flours are the same, if you can´t achieve a nice homogeneous dough, add bits of water.

Let it rest for 3h in a warm place covered with a clean cloth.

After the 3h, add the olive oil and work the dough again, let it rest for 30min.

Now the dough is ready to be cooked. You can cut the dough in four parts and, if you like it really thin, with this you will have 4 oven tray size coques (plural of coca).

If you want to freeze it, extend the dough and when it is ready for the ingredients, place it on top of a baking paper and roll it, then put it to a freezing bag and it can go straigh to freezer!

In the pictures you will see below, we cooked two coques, and froze the other two, one with spinach and tomato, and other one with onion. As I said earlier, the most typical way is with escalivada which it tastes amazing, but for me, the most delicious one is the one with onion but adding a bit of smoked pancetta.

For making the onion it is really simple, cut onions really thing and spread them around the dough, if you want add smoked pancetta, but otherwise just add salt, pepper and olive oil and 15 min at 200°C in the oven and it is ready!!

For the spinach, really simple too, in a hot pan with a bit of olive oil, saute the fresh spinach, when they start to shrink add salt and pepper and sunflower seeds if you have them. After saute the spinach for 3-5 min they will be ready so spread them in the dough and cut some tomato to put in top and 15min into oven at 200°C and it is ready too!

About the timing in the oven, it depens on the thickness of each coca, when the dough changes to slight toasted brown colour it is ready! Of course I rolled the dought really thin, and with that I did 4, but it depens on how thick you like it you will get more or less coques.

Hope you like it

Mr South 

Improvised panna cotta with homemade blueberry jam

Here it comes another super fast, easy dessert recipe. It was a bit of experiment, as to try to achieve a easy recipe that can save you from an improvised dinner or unexpected visit!

Ingredients

Serving for 4 

• 3dl double cream
• 2 tbsp quark
• 2 tbsp maple syrup
• 1 vanilla pod
• 1tsp gelatine powder 

Preparation

In a small sauce pan add the double cream, the quark, the maple syrup and a vanilla pod (opened in half with the seeds added to the sauce pan).

Start heating gently, mixing once in a while. You don´t want to boil it but to be warm, when is hot at touch, add the gelatine powder and mix thoroughly.

Pour into serving glasses and cool down for 30min or until firm (the smaller the serving the faster it cools)

Serve with a bit of blueberry jam; in our case it is homemade from the long summer days, we will post the recipe soon! 

Mr South

Caramelised pumpkin cake with black cardamom mousse

In the last fall, have been airing masterchef australia season 3 in a Finnish tv channel, we became huge fans of the series and bought the book. Since we got it, we didn´t try any recipe, so yesterday we tried Kate Brack pumpkin cake. We have changed few ingredients, and the mouse flavor, so we can say that we used her recipe to create something, for our taste, better. 

Ingredients

Serving for 6-8.

 Cake

• 300g butternut pumpkin (to caramelize 50g butter and 2tbsp sugar)
• 125g butter
• 1dl sugar
• 2 eggs
• 4 dl plain flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 50g toasted hazelnuts
• For the caramelize  (1 tbsp maple syrup, 2dl water, 1dl sugar)

 Mousse

• 0,6dl milk
• 0,6dl double cream
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon 
• 4 eggs
• 3/4 tsp black cardamom 
• 2 1/2 tsp gelatine powder
• 200g cream fraîche 
• 1 dl sugar

Preparation

 Mousse

To make the mousse, we start with adding to a small pot or sauce pan the milk, double cream, cinnamon and the black cardamom, heating gently till it almost boils to infuse the flavours. Let it rest till it cools down.

Place 4 of the egg yolks in a heatproof bowl over a pot with water (water has to boil gently, prevent to touch the bowl) and add 0,5 dl sugar. With a electric beater, whisk it for 5-8 min till thickens.

Add the gelatine powder to the infused milk and mix, move the mixture to the egg yolks and then add the cream fraîche.

With the remaining 4 egg whites, in a separate bowl, whisk them till soft peaks, adding gradually 0,5dl sugar.

Fold the egg whites to the mixture and let it rest in the fridge for at least 1h.

 Cake

Start with peeling and cutting the pumpkin to dices, once done place them in a oven tray with baking paper and paint the pumpkin with a mixture of 50g of melted butter and 2 tbsp of sugar. Place it into a 180°C oven for 30min. After that let it cool down a bit and smash it till smooth.

In a bowl, add 125g of butter and 1dl sugar and mix it if an electric beater. Once homogeneous, add 2 eggs, one at a time without stopping the electric beater. Then add the pumpkin puree and once again without stopping mixing add the flour, the baking powder and the hazelnuts (previously chopped).

In a cake tray, cover with baking paper, and add the dought and flatten. Place into oven for 30 min at 180°C.

When it is almost ready, add 2dl water and 1 dl sugar in a saucepan and bring it to boil as to prepare a syrup. When the liquid thickens, add 1tbps of maple syrup.

Once the cake is ready, paint the top with the syrup and let it cool down.

Next step is to cut, serve and enjoy!

Conclusions we have get from this recipe; it is surprisingly good and not so complicated. The black cardamom mousse is something else! but if you don´t like it just change the cardamom with cinnamon or orange zest.

In the original masterchef, Kate´s cake was too dense, with the recipe we used it is fluffy, so don´t know if for the book they already changed the recipe.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xk69oc_masterchef-aus-3-episode-76-part-2_shortfilms&start=984

Hope you like it as much as we did!
Mr South & Ms North

Butternut pumpkin cream

Hei guys! sorry for the long silence! During this christmas we have been in Spain, eating a lot, so we came back with few extra kilos!

So thought we could make a post of a light vegetable cream for those days after heavy xmas meals.

Ingredients

• Half butternut pumpkin
• 1 large leek
• 1 tbsp philadelphia cream cheese
• 1 tbsp cashew nuts
• olive oil, salt, pepper

Preparation

Easy preparation, clean and chop a large leek and saute in a casserole with a bit of oil. Meanwhile clean half a butternut pumpkin and chop in dices, when the leek is changing color, add the pumpkin. Saute it for few minutes and cover with water.

After 15 min, when the pumpkin gets soft, add the philadelphia and the cashew nuts and blend together.

For serving you can add a bit of salt flakes and sunflower seeds.

Hope you like it!
Mr South